1. PRICE ECONOMICS VERSUS WELFARE ECONOMICS: CONTEMPORARY OPINION.
- Author
-
Fetter, Frank A.
- Subjects
WELFARE economics ,ECONOMIC policy ,SOCIAL policy ,ECONOMICS ,CONSUMPTION (Economics) - Abstract
Alfred Marshall, the venerable dean of English economists, forms a bond between the later nineteenth and the early twentieth century economics, and by his remarkable talent for eclecticism probably embodies and exemplifies better than any one else the more generally prevailing uncritical opinion among English and American economists. There is, indeed, a thoroughgoing inconsistency in Marshall's views as to the central aim of economics, On the one hand he would aim to be a welfare economist. He aspires to make economics a study of real human welfare. But Marshall has also another aspiration, which is constantly tempting him to think and speak as a price economists rather than as a welfare economist. Thus he is led to abandon welfare as the center of economic study and to make money "the center around which economic scene clusters" and to use it as the one convenient means of measuring human motive on a large scale." He finds other difficulties when he attempts to make price the measure of motives as between men of different incomes ; equal sums of money are sought as general purchasing power by different persons for the most diverse motives "high as well as low, spiritual as well as material."
- Published
- 1920